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Shape of Things to Come
Part 1:In the Fullness of Time
Chapter 8 |
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Shape of Things to Come
Part 1:In the Fullness of Time
Chapter 8 |
Over the years, Paige’s life had both changed dramatically and stood still. She was probably the charmed sister whose appearance had altered the most over the last ten years or so. She now wore her hair in a very short, convenient cut and she was the sister who was not trying keep nature at bay as she aged. She still worked as the manager of the local employment centre, although over the years the work had changed from placing people in often part-time casual jobs, to actively promoting education programs that allowed clients career options, but her focus was always local aspects of employment. The centre had merged with similar organisations several times and sometimes after these mergers Paige kept her position by merit, and sometimes when she had been too effective for Powers that Be to want her to remain, Cole helped her with a magic flick of his fingers.
Paige knew that in the local district she and the other staff at the centre were legendary for their impact, because in some ways they had changed its social strata. She was very proud that her employment centre was often cited in government and assorted professional publications as a model of how local services could be used. Nevertheless, its very reputation as a ground-breaking phenomenon embedded into the community and managed as a local resource no matter how many times councils merged services, also made it a target for the ever-expanding Powers that Be who bitterly resented her success.
The conflict between those invested in helping people obtain jobs and the greater Powers that Be of employment centres became worse, not better over time. These authorities often believed that money allocated to the employment sector should be used to create enough minimum wage employees working three jobs to pay bills to satisfy the needs of businesses that ran only for profit, without offering poverty relief or career prospects to those who took the jobs. Paige believed they had a responsibility to provide assistance and individual development to clients who then had opportunities for better jobs. She devoted enormous energy to proving the lack of foresight by the Powers that Be, and they spent most of their energy hating her work and plotting to get rid of her, although that was not what they said on social networks and at various conferences on careers and employment and social development.
Paige was only too aware that her failures, and there were some, or her successes which did not help the statistics of governing bodies but allowed individuals to gain and keep their self-respect but, were recorded as ammunition to get rid of her. Phoebe told her that the more Powers that Be were, for wont of a better description, gunning for her, the greater her achievement and yes, it was a premonition.
If her choice of a career, which she did love, left Paige with quite justifiable discord, her life with her whitelighter lover Mark was satisfactory and happy, but tinged by a few regrets. She and Mark made some choices not to have whitelighter children, even if it was possible. They believed that whilst the occasional addition of a child with whitelighter heritage may have been foretold, birthing a race of whitelighters risked the balance of magic which depended on good souls seeking service in their afterlife. Not quite as hard a choice as for some people because Paige was never really a baby person although she dearly loved her nieces and nephews.
That this came as a relief to the world of magic, was not quite hidden from Paige. She had told Cole’s whitelighter their decision and was suspicious when Francesca had smiled gently and nodded. “If that is what you want, good my dear, very good.”
Paige wondered if Francesca’s approving smile hid something deeper and more worrying. She asked Mark point blank if he had ever discussed fathering whitelighters, and he said no but then honest as ever he explained that he had observed the process of calling whitelighters to serve and wondered, just wondered, how mortal hybrids fitted into the great plan. Something far too complicated for him.
“So, you think I’m a freak for being hybrid whitelighter?” Paige demanded spoiling for a fight and not getting one.
“No” he answered calmly “Just unique.”
“I am not” she insisted contradicting herself “Melinda and Wyatt are hybrid whitelighters.”
“He’s not a witch” Mark answered with a really annoying reasonable smile which Paige just managed to ignore. “Do you ever wonder why some mortals are magical, not witches but certainly have some connection to magic. Maybe people like Wyatt are the reason, as magic powers become more diluted over generations, don’t know I only wonder” he shrugged “I can’t help thinking though, if Cole is right about the balance when he says, Good wins over evil…just, creating more and more powerful witches like you and Melinda leads to creating worse and worse evil, to balance it. But I only wonder I don’t know.” He smiled gently.
Mark often asked Paige, apprehensively, whether her relationship with him was enough. She did not have to hesitate in giving him the reassurance.
“Anything short of evil” she told him “I would do to be with you.”
“I think I’m disappointed you would not go evil for me” he joked but he still kept asking for reassurance.
Paige was not lying. Mark meant everything to her. Just waking knowing she was loved, whether he was there or not made her happy. She never wanted anyone else, never looked at anyone else, never saw anything in anyone else that made her question their sacrifices to be together but that did not mean it was perfect. There were consequences, a price to pay and for Paige it was that a great part of her life in the mortal world was lonely.
In a world that was partnered, she was not. She had been a pretty girl and now she was a beautiful woman and her experiences in the world of magic and her confidence and success in her work made the world seriously question, sometimes very unkindly, why she was alone
A couple of the employment centre colleagues who could remember when Mark had been alive and managed the employment centre, which was how Paige met him, rather sadly accepted it when she said she had had one great love and that was enough for her. They even explained that to other colleagues who shook their collective heads at the foolishness of the idea that one love was enough.
However, as she got older, Paige discovered that in a world unaccepting of her singledom, quite often, mostly men but occasionally women, refused to accept her choices. More and more she was the recipient of unwanted approaches. In the early years, after Mark had passed over it was people near her own age looking for partners, then as she came closer to forty it was older men looking for a good time and now as she disgustedly told Phoebe it was younger men who decided she must be looking for a virile lover. Of course, she could not talk it over with Mark because he would be worried about her. She could talk it over with Phoebe however and Phoebe was not of the opinion using magic to get rid of unwelcome advances even remotely had consequences.
Paige’s other great success in her life was magic. Paige’s whitelighter heritage gave her a strong instinct to help and guide. Watching Charlie and Fern grow up, struggling with pressure from their coven and whitelighter to embrace their magic without any real understanding of consequences, Paige decided young witches needed help to explore their magic. She had seen many make some wrong choices or some good choices for the wrong reasons. She thought they would really have benefited by sharing experiences with other young witches. Consequently, she developed a small group where teenage girls who happened to be magic could come together and safely talk about anything they wanted, as well as make friends with other girls sharing the same journey. Within the safety of the Manor and protected from snooping by magic, including elders and whitelighters, the girls all came to some understanding of their life choices.
She called the group “*itchesTalking” as a joke and the names stuck so the girls could mention it to mortals. The groups success was treated by the magic Powers that Be with the same enthusiasm of those in the employment centre and they resented Paige.
Several girls eventually walked away from magic but some confidently embraced it. Both choices made Paige very proud of her work which was not highly regarded by some witch covens or the coven’s whitelighters, especially the Simpson family whitelighter, a dower man named Caleb who had once been the Charmed One’s whitelighter and they politely but firmly despised. He returned their feelings.
“Doesn’t anyone love me” Paige asked in one of her down moments.
“We do” Phoebe replied hugging her, as Piper hugged both of them
Outside her job and her relationship with Mark and her magic, the great joy in Paige’s life was Jade Simpson’s family but they but also a source of considerable worry. Paige had never imagined herself as a mother, let alone a guardian, mentor and big sister to five very fragile and hurt young people. She managed however to a greater or lesser extent depending on how people judged step-families, which as she said in the circumstances was the best anyone could have done, although her sisters insisted that the way she managed was far more than anyone else would have dreamed of doing.
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There had never been any intention for the Simpson girls or their brothers to become part of the extended Halliwell family, it just happened. Their mother Jade Simpson was killed chasing warlocks and she left behind five children, aged from seven to seventeen. Regrettably, all Jade’s family, sisters, her aunt, and her mother had been killed fighting evil and protecting sister witches. Jade was working with the Charmed Ones at the time of her death, and in a rash moment Paige had promised, in what she thought was the unlikely event of Jade’s death, she would look after Jade’s children.
All the Charmed Ones knew they were not responsible for Jade’s death, she was after all a witch who was fighting the good cause and she knew the risks, especially considering the family members who had been lost. The charmed witches did however, agree that they had a responsibility for Jade’s daughters, and not just because of Paige’s promises to be big sister to them, but because they all had regarded Jade with the greatest respect, and her children were her legacy.
On practical levels though, raising five young people who had been to hell and back was not without difficulties. It cost a fortune, it was emotionally taxing, and it changed the whole balance of the Halliwell family. However, they accepted all of the responsibility because as Piper said with a deep sigh, responsibility either was or was not, no half measures. Her sisters, with Leo and Cole’s agreement, told Paige that her family responsibilities were of course her family’s responsibilities as it would have been if she had natural born children. To Phoebe and Piper’s shock when told quite matter of factually that taking on responsibility for the young people meant taking on all of it, including emotional and financial responsibilities, not just the parts that were easy, Paige had uncharacteristically burst into tears. Purchasing the house next door although presented as a matter of fiscal accountability, had caused another round of tears, mostly pent up from the times that Paige had remained unemotional, determined and dogged when dealing with Powers that Be of all the authorities she crossed
Additionally, the witch Leslie, the oldest of Jade’s three daughters and two sons had fought with the Halliwell sisters in the mis-adventurous war that Good had embarked on in Burvjara and they, as did all the witches who went there, felt an obligation to all the survivors. Mostly though the Simpson’s joined the family because …it just happened.
Sometimes looking back, Paige had a strong suspicion that Jade had concerns about how her husband John would raise five children on his own. The truth was, that even though he lived twenty years with the dread of Jade passing, he monumentally did not cope after her death. An introverted man who worked as an accountant at a large trading firm, he had depended on Jade for the security of his home, the support of family life and management of his children and when she was lost, so was he.
After losing Jade, John hated witches and was brutal to any that went near him while he was hurting. Therefore, Leo spent considerable time with him but for all Leo’s skills at guidance, John simply did not want support, he wanted to wallow in his pain. John became angry, disorientated, resentful and found some relief with alcohol.
In a drunken stupor, he admitted to Leo that he always knew Jade would go, like the rest of her family, but nevertheless he was totally unprepared for her loss and totally unprepared to deal with the needs of teenagers and younger who had just lost their mother. He told Leo he hated magic, always had. He had wanted Jade to leave it, to be a wife, to put his needs above magic. He hated his daughters’ calling, never wanted them to have anything to do with magic and bitterly resented it when they chose their magic inheritance.
It was no use suggesting to him that he could not alter who his daughters were, or that they had the right to choose, or to advise that he could not force them to ignore magic because it had a way of finding those with magic souls. John was who he was and he did not function or want to function without his wife, regardless of anything Leo did to help him. As Phoebe said it took an exceptional man to cope with a witch-calling in his family. Lord knows six men had walked out on Grams and Victor, their father didn’t last with their mother Patty and all the girls knew witch friends who had wobbly marriages and even when the marriages worked it was not without stress and strain. John was not in that regard an exceptional man, he was just a mortal one.
John and Jade’s marriage had worked Phoebe pointed out, Jade in her blunt way had been happy and while she was alive, so was John. However, the witches strongly felt that was because Jade had made it work. Jade was a no nonsense call it like it is woman and witch who loved her children and was devoted to her family. And then she was taken and her husband could not function.
After her mother’s death, Leslie the eldest girl, just seventeen and still learning about her powers, listened to a magic call to take part in the Burvjaran war, despite her father’s anger. She mostly agreed because she was scared if she did not go her vulnerable younger sisters would. After the horrors of that war, Leslie, still at school wanted to leave her magic calling. With Paige’s support and many discussions with Phoebe and Piper she had decided to give it away until she finished her education. She said she could not ignore her heritage but she needed time to come to some peace with her mother’s death and her doubts.
Unfortunately, she did not get that time. Her family coven depended on Jade’s family for protection, as they all had active fighting powers to do with fire and flame and recognising evil. Two witches from the coven went into battle without protection and were only saved when the Charmed Ones intervened. Furthermore, Fern, Leslie’s fifteen-year-old sister, tried to understand Leslie’s reluctance to be a witch but felt there was a family duty to follow her mother’s calling to protect sister witches. Her ten-year-old sister Charlie wanted to fight warlocks to revenge her mother. Leslie much as she hated magic and was devastated by the war she saw, decided it was her responsibility to give her younger sisters a childhood and time to grieve for their mother.
When his daughter Leslie had very reluctantly heeded the call of her mother’s heritage, her father John had been furious. A hesitant but determined Leslie tried to explain why she would never be able to ignore magic and the witches of her coven tried to explain her calling but John exploded in a drunken and brutal rage. In the cold light of day, he was ashamed of his reaction but blamed Leslie for ‘making’ him act that way.
After that all John’s pain and loss became Leslie’s fault. A little later her sisters, hurting and very young and not possessing much wisdom had blown up at their father for failing them and insisted they were witches ahead of being his daughters which was of course Leslie’s fault too. In another drunken rage, her father had thrown Leslie, not much than seventeen, out of the family home blaming her for her sisters’ actions. John told Leslie her mother would be ashamed of her wanting to kill her sisters and that he would never allow her near them again. He ordered her out of the house with only the clothes she was standing in and her phone in her pocket.
The Simpson family lived on the other side of the harbour to the Halliwell family and a distressed Leslie wandering around, was attacked by some nasty kids. As a good witch however, she understood the consequences of using magic on mortals, so her phone was stolen, and she was alone on the streets. She finally walked all night, arriving at the Halliwell residence where Leo found her sitting in a frozen huddle on the steps of the Manor the next morning.
Of course, Leslie was immediately installed in the spare room and the Halliwell family found themselves dealing with a hysterical teenager. Leslie needed help and she needed affection. There were scars she would carry to her grave but fortunately in going to the Halliwell family, she was somewhere she could feel safe. Mark even kept the whitelighters and witches away from her, giving her the time and space she needed away from magic.
It was not the end of family dramas however. When her father would not even allow her to return home for her clothes, Paige orbed her into the house over the harbour to retrieve her things and some of the small treasures that her mother had left her, effectively cutting her off from the family home. Her father’s mother, a divorced woman living in a two-room apartment tried to be supportive. John Simpson was furious at his mother and barred her from her other grandchildren who desperately needed her, so Leslie, grown wise beyond her years told her grandmother she was okay alone, the others needed their grandmother.
Leslie feeling very much alone in the world was still at school and had been planning to go to college. The Charmed sisters decided that changing schools when everything else in her life was unstable was not a good idea so Paige made sure she got to school over the harbour daily. Despite enjoying the morning orb, when her sister Fern who went to the same school told her that John was bullying the boys, Robbie and Donald and threatening them if they even mentioned the word magic, Leslie wanted to quit school to help her brothers and sisters. As patiently as she could, Paige encouraged her into to stay at school and keep her college ambitions which would be more help to her siblings. Leslie agreed but started making plans to look after them as soon as she was earning wages.
Partly to keep an eye on her, Phoebe ordered Cole to give Leslie a part-time job, filing and helping in his office, so she felt she was doing something to support herself and help her siblings with a few new clothes, and where Cole could keep an eye on her. This at least was successful because Leslie, still young enough to dream, was transfixed by the work he did and was determined to become a lawyer to help those that Cole was helping and of course her siblings. To do this, Leslie needed to go to college and she began fixating on ludicrous plans to keep working and studying because John was not going to support his eldest daughter’s education. Finally, the Halliwell family all agreed that Leslie losing one more ambition because of the death of her mother and loss of her father would be the last straw for her.
They had a long discussion and all of them decided that being responsible for Leslie meant really being responsible for Leslie. Despite the financial struggles they were having at the time and over Leslie’s objections, they decided to use the family college fund to help as their own children were very young. If Leslie was going to be responsible for her siblings, and it seemed very likely, she would be able to do that much better on a graduate’s salary than a minimum wage. Cole agreed to keep her working part-time so she had the feeling she was contributing financially.
The Charmed sisters even stepped up so that Leslie did not have to feel responsible for her coven, but the difference between the Charmed Ones calling and these witches left the magic balance wobbling and they could not always help. This situation lasted about six months when Jade’s coven, became desperate for the magic of the Simpson family. Tempus was gaining power and, all witches were confronting demons who became more dangerous as time passed. The coven therefore approached a boy-mad not quite sixteen-year-old Fern who said yes without any real understanding of what she was committing too.
All three witches talked to Fern, supported her, and did their best to guide her, but Fern was adamant she would follow her mother’s calling. Her father was no more understanding than he had been with Leslie. To no one’s surprise Fern, after a row with her father that somehow equated her interest in boys to being a magic whore, arrived on the Halliwell door step and Paige found herself being den mother to two disturbed teenagers.
Fern tried going home and a remorseful John tried to build bridges with her but it was on the condition she gave up all magic, to the concern of her big sister and the Halliwell family because they all knew that magic would find her and Fern refused.
In the meantime, John met another woman, one who was decidedly not magical but did take on the role of managing his life, filling the gap that Jade had left. She encouraged him to believe his daughters’ connection to magic was a connection to a weird cult, citing Leslie living with the freakish Halliwell family as evidence. Consequently, Fern spent the next six months moving between her grandmother, her father’s home, and the Manor where she either slept on the sofa or shared Leslie’s bed. With the four children of the Halliwell’s, Leslie, Fern, and secret visits from their two brothers Donald and Robbie because her father forbade them to see either Paige who they regarded as a big sister, or Leslie, the Manor was full to the brim.
Fern and Leslie were soon joined by the youngest sister Charlie. Charlie had always been ebullient and precocious and she bitterly resented someone taking her mother’s place. It was not long before she too was crying on the Manor’s door step. John made a pretense of demanding she came home but her father’s new wife did not want three difficult step-daughters to interfere with their new life. There were however, very aggressive conversations about money, child support and guardian roles. John seemed to take delight in refusing to sign anything that required a legal guardian’s consent, even for such things as school camps. He certainly would not support them or pay for the girls’ needs. They would have to come home for that he said, but he made it impossible for them to stay.
There were countless confrontations, visits and communication with school counselors who of course could not understand that magic was the problem but did believe the John and his new wife when they talked of cults. Cole finally went to court to get fostering rights for the girls and using a little of his own magic, and some help from the girl’s grandmother kept the subject of magic out of the courts.
Adopting the Simpson family caused some terrible strains on the Halliwell budget because none of the family had anticipated the education of three more kids and they all felt if Leslie had a chance at her dream, Fern and Charlie needed the same chance. Then it became five because John began blaming the boys Robbie and Donald for alienating their sisters from him. Technically they were still living with their father, but if John had ever intended to help them get a college education, and all the Halliwells presumed Jade would have encouraged it, he no longer did. He had another two children with his new wife and any money he had set aside was given to the new children.
Both boys blamed John for driving their sisters away and the step-mother blamed them for upsetting any equilibrium she had created for John. When the Halliwell family bought next door the boys, more or less, moved in too. Donald finished school and did get a minimum wage job without discussing it with anyone, but Leo found him getting drunk with some bad friends, which ended up with Donald tearfully telling Leo what his mother’s death had cost him. The Halliwell family all concluded, again. that being responsible meant being responsible and Donald, like his two sisters Fern and Leslie, was offered his chance which he gratefully accepted.
Once again Leslie, now studying for her law degree offered to sacrifice her dreams and go to work. Cole bluntly told her not to be stupid and Phoebe asked practically how depriving herself of a decent education helped anyone. Somehow or other, Jade’s children got the education she would have wanted and with the money they repaid, a few trading deals and any extra bonuses from Phoebe’s book sales going into the college account, there was just enough so that the four Halliwell children would also get their chances although it would be very tight.
The one thing the whole family could say was that they never had any regrets about extending their family to Jade’s children. When they first made the decision to be responsible for them, it was as Phoebe warned without expectation of gratitude or repayment or even affection. They actually got all three, all the more valuable because it was offered without request or expectation. Simply put, they took in five distressed and understandably confused young people because they felt a responsibility after their mother’s death to offer them a safe home.
They came to love all of the Simpsons and without doubt the Simpsons loved them.
There were of course many adjustments to be made. The Halliwells were left in no doubt of Piper and Phoebe’s father Victor’s reaction to the extended family. He was shocked and it took him some time to come to terms his family had doubled, in fact it was three years before he bought Christmas and birthday presents for all of them.
Magic also caused some problems for all the family and solved others. The Simpsons all had to learn about and accept Leo and Cole’s roles in the magic world and accept why so many powerful magic creatures were regular visitors at the Manor. Phoebe was never able to talk too much about her romance with Cole. Even to herself, she could never explain why she had done some of the things she had done, but all five Simpson siblings understood something momentous had happened between Phoebe and Cole. If they asked Cole anything. in a dry voice, he answered truthfully and matter of factly which did leave all of them in shock.
The Simpson siblings learnt to accept creatures of greater magic such as high ranking whitelighters, like Francesca and guardians visiting. Francesca thoroughly approved the family expansion. Cole remembered her own history with her step-children and how she told him that children did not have to be yours naturally, it was just necessary to have an investment to love them.
Fern particularly adored the demon guardian Arturo because in her second year of college some fellow archeology students went on an excursion to Greece. She desperately wanted to join them but worried about money. Cole, uncaring of personal gain, shimmered Fern to meet her friends in Athens and then the students backpacked around Greece. Being archeology students, they wanted to see Delphi where Arturo lived in a safe nexus. At Phoebe’s request he had good naturedly put the student’s up in his house, was a most welcoming and charming host, gave them a very personalized tour of the ancient site, then treated them to an expensive meal at one of the best Greek restaurants in the town. Fern was forever grateful to him. She said the visit made her feel like a real person because she could offer her friends such an experience and was not a charity case.
“She offered them the experience” muttered Cole when Fern told the family about it because the consequences were that Arturo took a considerable interest in Fern’s family, and lectured Cole on exactly how he was responsible for them. Phoebe shushed him.
Cole spent some time fixing teenage pranks and mistakes, such as when Robbie crashed Piper’s car two days after getting his licence, and Fern got caught giving her sisters and brothers a lift three months after getting hers. Phoebe wondered if it would have been better if they faced the consequences but Cole and Leo both agreed that the Simpsons had faced enough consequences for any young people and they deserved a few breaks, and that there was no point worrying Piper by telling her.
There were of course some issues with the integrated family. There was the very real danger of the four Halliwell children resenting the time and effort that the Simpson family needed and no one felt this was something that should happen. Leo sometimes wondered if the children got spoilt in the effort to make sure they were not resentful. However, Phoebe assured him that it was a good thing because having five foster cousins who did normal kid things and got into normal kid trouble stopped Piper’s worrying from spilling into restricting what Halliwell children did. They could always argue that Donald skateboarded and had not broken his neck, and Charlie was magical, and she went camping with schoolfriends and their parents when she was twelve.
The family shared some activities. With the boys’ arrival, Leo finally had people in the house who really enjoyed watching sports, and he became as interested in baseball as Donald. Donald also regularly convinced a reluctant and lazy Wyatt and a non-team minded Patsy to play catch with him, which made Leo very happy to see them doing ‘normal’ things
Robbie, although he had a driving licence, was a bicycling fanatic and cycled everywhere, despite living in San Francisco. Because both Patsy and Wyatt used their bikes for photography expeditions, cycling with Robbie gave them a lot more latitude to explore than Piper really liked. Piper still worried because Robbie was only five years older than Patsy but she managed to contain it, and Cole never told her he fixed things for the boys, such as pranged bikes and Paige never told Piper of the injuries she fixed after the inevitable falls.
The three girls had known Melinda since she was very young and had been inclined to spoil her then, so she was clever at getting them to take her point of view especially as she grew older and had a decidedly different point of view than her parents about everything. As soon as they were able to take younger passengers, after getting their licences, all five more or less willingly helped with the taxi service for Melinda and later Mandy when she wanted to see the horses at the stables at every opportunity. Melinda was inclined to be jealous that Leslie worked with Cole and saw more of ‘Unca’ Cole than she did. Sometimes Fern’s bluntness caused a ruckus when Patrick called her out on her logic but for the most part the family worked as a family as much as any of them could hope for.
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